Reactive Oxygen Death Program

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are closely associated in plants and animals with disease, stress, and cell death. Wagner et al. now show in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana that stress reactions formerly attributed to physicochemical damage caused by one of these ROS, singlet oxygen, is the result of an actively pursued genetic program that requires a chloroplast protein, EXECUTER1. Inactivation of the EXECUTER1 gene was sufficient to protect plants from the damage normally induced by singlet oxygen.